Residents trash Dolton landfill plan

Company says annexing 86 acres of Chicago land into village will help cash-strapped area

May 24, 2012|By Dawn Rhodes, Chicago Tribune reporter

Land of Lakes Co. is suing the city of Chicago over an 86-acre property on the Southeast Side that it wants to use to expand its Dolton landfill. (Scott Strazzante, Tribune photo)

Ald. John Pope started a recent town hall meeting in Hegewisch with a simple question for his constituents: "Does anyone here want landfills?"

"No!" the crowd of 100 boomed.

It was a familiar refrain from the residents who live in a southeastern slice of Chicago near land that the owners of Cook County's only active landfill have pinpointed for expansion.

Land and Lakes Co., which operates the River Bend Prairie Landfill in south suburban Dolton, is suing to disconnect 86 acres of Chicago's Riverdale community from the city. The parcel is an inactive landfill where the company stopped accepting waste in the mid-1990s.

Should it succeed, the Park Ridge-based company has its sights set on annexing the property into the village of Dolton and using it again for landfill space, according to public records.

Land and Lakes touts its expansion plan as a financial boon for cash-strapped Dolton, but some argue the lawsuit is merely a legal end-run around Chicago's 28-year ban on new and expanded landfills and would undo efforts to restore the highly polluted area near Lake Calumet.

The matter goes to trial Thursday at the Daley Center. But it is just the latest in a decades-long fight over landfills on the Southeast Side, where residents and environmentalists have fought to block waste companies from expanding in an area long known as the city's de facto dumping ground.

"I can't believe they still want to do this to us," said Denise Zajac, 38, of Hegewisch. "They don't know who we are, they don't know our faces and they don't care. It outrages me."

Meanwhile, the political wheels are in motion to torpedo the company's effort. Legislation banning new or expanded landfills in Cook County advanced out of the state Senate late Wednesday afternoon and now goes to the governor.

In 1984, the City Council enacted a moratorium against creating new or expanding existing landfills.

The policy became more contentious as area landfills neared capacity in the late 1980s. Waste companies challenged the ban or tried to negotiate with community members to keep facilities open, but those efforts were rebuffed by the city and residents opposed to continued dumping.

Chicago's landfills gradually shut down, and in 2005 the City Council extended the moratorium for 20 years.

In the mid-1980s, the city had four active landfills on the Southeast Side alone. Today, the county's only active facility is River Bend in Dolton, where the city ships less than 1 percent of its trash, said a spokeswoman from the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation. The rest of the city's garbage goes to sites near Rockford, Pontiac and into Indiana, she said.

"The landfill ban was an important step," said Howard Learner, president of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. "The areas on the Southeast Side had become over-concentrated with landfills, and toxic pollutants had an impact on water and on communities in which people live."

The land at the center of the lawsuit sits on the southern tip of the city, near the Little Calumet River and the Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve.

The River Bend landfill, at 801 E. 138th St. in Dolton, is near capacity and projected to close in 2013, according to the Illinois EPA. Last June, two months after the lawsuit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court, Land and Lakes proposed the annexation idea to Dolton's Village Board, stating that the village could net nearly $36 million over 25 years from the expansion.

The board voted to "negotiate with Land and Lakes in good faith" on an annexation agreement if the company wins its lawsuit, records show. Dolton Mayor Ronnie C. Lewis did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Southeast Side residents at Pope's meeting Tuesday said they were aghast that they had to revisit the topic of landfills so soon after scoring the 20-year extension on the moratorium.

"They're not being considerate of us at all," said Alex Gomez, 22, a Hegewisch native. "I want to live here for the rest of my life, but if they're going to keep dumping on us, how's it going to be 20 years from now? Do I want to buy a house here only to sell it? Do I want to live here now?"

"There is a total disregard for the health and well-being of minority people," said South Shore resident Patricia Knazze, 62. "There aren't landfills in Winnetka or Kenilworth simply because the folks in those communities won't stand for it. We have to advocate for the disenfranchised."

Beale said he does not support more garbage dumping and will pull the proposal if the city prevails at trial. But if Land and Lakes wins the lawsuit, Beale said it could open a Pandora's box of other waste companies suing to disconnect from the city. The result could be other landfills popping up near Chicago's edge, which the city could not control.

"If they're going to dump, why not have the city get some benefits out of it as well as protecting the taxpayers of the city of Chicago?" Beale said.

But Pope, of the 10th Ward, lobbied extensively for the 20-year moratorium and is loath to see it reversed.

"We fought hard for the end of landfills here. We don't have them now. We don't need them. We don't want them," he said.

While the legal and political proceedings play out, some area residents ponder the ramifications of a revived landfill.

James Tripp, of Calumet City, an avid fisherman of the Calumet Sag Channel, mused that he may have to find another location for his favorite hobby.

"It's going to pollute and it's going to kill a lot of fish," said Tripp, 50. "I hope that they don't (expand) because they're going to take away from my pastime."

Dolton resident Hommie Washington, 67, also conceded that he'd have to go elsewhere to fish.